The lake is really popular with eagles. There are a bunch of trees with giant nest set into the tops. I thought about putting up a lot more pictures of the dam, but I was honestly surprised how little (none, really) security consideration there was.

June 02, 2009

Campsite Scouting - Hazlet Hollow

Not quite one year ago, we went camping at Hazlet Hollow, one of the campgrounds in the Horsethief Basin Rec Area near Crown King. Just a few days after leaving, some dipshit got lost, set a signal fire, and proceeded to burn half the mountain down. We had heard the campground was spared, but much of the area around it was burned. This last weekend we decided to head up there and see how bad things looked.

May 28, 2009

Damn *hic* it!

I haven't had the hiccups in years. It's a good thing too. When I get them, they don't go away until it's gone well past annoying, blown right through painful, and settled somewhere near "just kill me now." This afternoon is gonna suck.

May 19, 2009

Content of a sort

While I was thrashing about looking for something, anything, that would pique my interest enough to write, I realized I don't have an "about the doucheb... author" page. That is now remedied. It will eventually end up somewhere in the homepage template.

1
Nice to meetcha. My about page is shamefully low on detail compared to yours...but then, it took geoff (the original, not the new harkonnen guy) about an hour to track down my real name, so I figure I've shared enough information online already.

Those IB guys are pretty good PI's. Eddiebear tracked down Cranky after he disappeared from the tubes, but it was just a bit too late.

I almost put up my ham callsign in the about page, but with that you kind find a full name and address in about 30 seconds online, if you know where to look.

I think we're both in the Hostages Facebook group, so it would be pretty easy to find my full name there. I'm the only Will in there. (At least I seem to recall getting an invite and joining up, but since they redid the page layouts, I have a hell of a time getting to my "groups."

3
I got invited to the Hostages group but didn't join because I felt delicate about joining a group for a blog on which I never comment (due to the majority of the conversations taking place while I am asleep)...but I am in the Moronosphere Facebook Bureau.

4
Well, I mostly lurk over there too, but when a good joke thread starts early (or I'm not particularly busy at work) I try to chime in. It's a private/invisible group, so the only people who can see it are members.

I did not know there was a Moronosphere group. I should probably get Billy up in the sidebar at some point.

April 08, 2009

This has been percolating around in my head for the last week. I know
there's got to be more examples to flesh it out, but I can't bring
myself to trudge through more of these bastards' crap.

We like to point to Obama's various screwup on his first world tour as
signs of a weak and unserious mind. But the more I look at his actions,
the more I see a pattern that was noted before throughout the Rush
kerfluffle in January and February.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

That's
Rule 13 (which, depending on your source, may or may not even exist).
We know Obama was raised drinking deep from the far-left koolaid; where
all the world's ills are attributed directly to western liberal
democracy and the United States in particular. In order for leftist
utopia to emerge, the United States must be brought to heal, or
destroyed all together. That's his target.

Freeze:-Present a weak and rudderless national defense posture. Don't respond to provocation; cut the defense budget.
-Propose massive spending increases with deficits that will bankrupt the
country in short order. Create so many domestic problems to contend
with, we can't effectively handle international ones.

Personalize:
-Lay the blame for the current recession and any other current bugbear
at the feet of the United States. Give all the world's problems a
uniquely American face. Domestically, it may be "the previous
administration," but internationally it's all about "Americans" this
and "America" that. Failures are "American," successes are
"Multi-national."
-Be perfectly content with the eliminating the US Dollar as the standard world currency.

Polarize:
-Insult the leaders of our most steadfast allies through poor decorum
and double-speak. -Leave those nations most depending on our support
(Israel, Japan, Iraq, Taiwan, South Korea) wondering if they can really
depend on us at all.

All of these actions serve to isolate us from our allies and weaken us in the eyes our enemies. He's looking to turn us into an international pariah worthy only of ridicule, leaving the US no different effectively than North Korea.

1
It's hard to avoid seeing Obama's actions as being deliberately harmful to the US. Ultimately it's not even necessary. It doesn't really matter. There's no way all this won't do a lot of damage to the US and the world's perception of the US.

March 26, 2009

Well isn't this just fan-f'n-tastic

I always had my suspicions. It was always subtle and just beneath the surface. I expected better craft than this.

I'm about three chapters in to book 7 of the Malazan series and Erikson has given up on playing it straight. He'd descended into full-on Canadian Twat Lefty Wet-Dream Political Allegory Theater. A group of Letherii calling themselves the "Patriotists" is running rough-shod over the local populous searching for political dissidents and torturing/disappearing academics and intellectuals.

This better improve quickly or I'll burn the fucking thing in effigy. Christ, how many people have I recommended this to by now? I'm going to have a lot of apologies to write.

2
Yeah. Whatever comes to pass between Rhulad, Karsa and Icarium should (should) be epic.

The whole "warren unto themselves" thing with the Toblakai confuses me a bit. If all the indigenous humanoid species descended from the Eres, what happened to the Toblakai that made them so special? I don't think blood oil can explain all of it. It seemes like something similar applies for Icarium.

I'm hoping for a lot more Tehol and Bugg. Those two crack me up. Their relationship is even more amusing after the revelation at the end of 5.

"something similar" indeed... We knew that Icarium was half-Jaghut, but now we know what the other half is.

It's fair to assume that there are differences in physiology that we haven't been alerted to. We know that the Tarthenal are sorta-kinda non-pure-blooded Toblakai, and even they have extra pairs of lungs (!) and suchlike. Still, whoa.

Tehol and Bugg, indeed. And more Malazan marines, which always makes a book better.
I'm also looking forward to some Errant vs. Paran action.

4
I'm only about 240 pages in at this point. I tend to read just before
bed, and now I get Pavlovian drowsiness whenever I try to sit down and
chew through a big chunk of pages.

If I read right last
night, I think the Errant let slip that Icarium's other half is
Kilmandaros(sp). That's an ascendant we haven't had much of anything to
do with prior to the prologue of this book. Errant also hinted that it
was Icarium who ruined Elder Shadow. That's a lot of damage for one
dude.

1
That was awesome! One question, how do users of vocaloid program her voice? Do they just type in the lyrics for her to sing or syllable by syllable?

Posted by: SporkLift Driver at February 18, 2009 10:42 PM (ofsV2)

2
I'm a little fuzzy on it myself. From what I understand, the user specifies the pitch and lyrics (in Japanese), and the software takes care of the rest. The task is made significantly easier by the fact that Japanese words are composed of fairly formulaic syllables. さ is sa regardless (almost) of whatever comes before or after. In this case they tried to find the best fits from the Japanese syllabary to cover the original English lyrics.

February 15, 2009

Well look what I found...

The folks were rummaging through some old boxes this winter left over from when I moved out. They collected a bunch of books they thought were mine (but I know they aren't, technically, as most were published before I was born), and brought them over in a little sci-fi care-package.

2
I'm sure I screwed something up. It's been a while since I did any work with images on the blog. With the image already loaded in local cache, I didn't notice any problems or slow loading. Guess I'll have to make a lo-res copy for inline.

November 05, 2008

For anyone who may be morbidly curious about...

why the hell I haven't been posting, much of my time has been chewed up with work and a small side project. There's little of the new fall anime season that's grabbed my attention. I've just been keeping up with the second season of Clannad and Gundam 00.

September 26, 2008

August and September have been a living hell at work. Mostly because it feels like I'm the only one with a metric assload of work to do (and I'm not far off the mark in the impression).

Finished the third volume of Gurren Lagann, Just as good the 3rd, 4th, 5th time now? I've lost track. It really is good to see a character shed the emo-nebbish funk in such a fashion.

I guess I stopped putting up new content right around the time my A/C gave out. That tends to put a helluva damper on things. Given how much heat both my computers pump out, I shut them both off that week and read a book while they ordered the new compressor. Thank god for home warranties.

I've got plenty of thoughts on the bailout, but none of them are fit for a blog with anything less than an X-rating.

Got tripped into World of Warcraft by a friend. I find it fun, but I'm also glad to discover I don't carry the gene that causes people to ruin their lives over a damned video game.

Thinking about a mini-one-day road trip up to the cool pines for a classic car show this weekend. I haven't decided it it's going to be worth the gas. Then again it sure would be nice to get the hell out of Dodge for a bit.

2
I think I managed to get in an hour on Wednesday night, but that's been it for the last few days. Got home a shade after midnight last night after two late softball games. It's like I'm brunging the candle at both ends, but not in the fun and crazy way.

August 08, 2008

Stephen Erikson's Malazan Series

Having dug into a few fantasy series at this point, it's become clear there are tiers involved in picking and/or recommending certain series to others.

Stuff like Harry Potter is ubiquitous because it's easily accessible to a wide range of people. The language used isn't particularly dense (when it does get weird, it's used for effect), and the tone starts out whimsical and only darkens with the need for greater perils to throw against the protagonists.

That's what I'd label elementary level material. That doesn't mean it's necessarily simple; just that there's always something shiny to catch your eye and at least spme themes easily grasped by an inexperienced audience. There can still be other concepts churning beneath the surface for the older, patient, and more experienced readers. Pacing tends to be brisk to maintain interest; or lots of uncanny/unique set-pieces keep you reading when nothing spectacularly important is going on. The main cast usually doesn't extend beyond a dozen or so people.

Next come the intermediate series like Jordan's Wheel of Time or Feist's Rift War material. Geeks in junior high and high school eat this stuff up. It may start out light. It may start out dark. There will be blood, guts, and a little sex. You can usually expect over a dozen characters to keep track of, often split into groups scattered hither-and-yon. Pacing may take a hit in favor of political machination or other drudgery necessary for later plot points. None of this means a younger audience won't enjoy them, just that a much smaller percentage of young kids will be able to stay interested or have parents who think it's age-appropriate.

Wheel of Time is great for trivia geeks who want to decrypt all the cultural/historical references and extrapolate how those references may play into the plot. The gee-wiz fun of learning about the world of "Rand-land" drops off in books 4-6 as the plot descends into politics. This is where a lot of people will give up on the series. Jordan isn't inclined to linger on the gruesome like some authors. Characters have a nasty habit of not being dead when you think they should be or staying dead when you know they were. The plot finally started moving again in book 11, just in time for Jordan to die of a rare blood disease in the middle of writing #12, the finale.

Rift War is basically a D&D campaign in novel form. You will be dealing with entire generations of characters scattered across two different worlds (Midkemia: elves and dwarves and medieval humans oh my - Kelewan: interesting mix of ancient Japan, Incas, and Aztecs with lots of hexapedal animals thrown in to the mix). That means there will be a lot of characters dying in battles or of old age. While the series does devolve into political drama from time to time, it rarely does for more than half a book before something somewhere goes to hell. Gets gruesome from time to time, generally for effect, not just for gore's sake.

Finally we get to advanced/college level fantasy. Series end up here either because they're just incredible dense and/or they have one or more aspects (flaws maybe?) that would eventually drive off your "average" junior high or high school kid. Chance of annoyingly detailed descriptions of blood and gore? Very High. Odds you'll run across the author trying his hand at prophetic-sounding prose, poetry, and/or songs? Also very high. Number of character you'll run into that speak in gibberish (often 3rd-person) that may actually be very damned important? 2+. These series may ask you to keep track of several groups numbering a dozen or more. Names will look like the author got a bulk bargain on vowels and apostrophes and is damned-sure intent on using them. A couple names like this can be great for helping you remember a few unique characters. The converse can also be true.

Lord of the Rings gets placed here for only a couple reasons, otherwise I think it's readily accessible to a younger audience.

1) Yes mister Tolkien, we know the whole cosmic mish-mash of the world you wrote is one massive song building to a climax, but you are not a song writer. Please stop.

2) Tom Bombadil. If there was one spot in all the books that tried even my patience, (and I have a strong tendency to wait things out to see how they end) it was dealing with this fruit.

It's been a long time since I read the series, but I do remember the pace being a little more sedate than most. The language used is more advanced, and I'm not sure if that says more about the target audience at the time, or the general aptitude of the target audience today.

Goodkind's Sword of Truth is here, not because it's particularly advanced, but because it's so full of "mature" material. Several rape scenes and a metric ton of gore (not to mention the protagonist's raging temper) left me wondering what's going on in Goodkind's head. It gets very dull reading him rant and rail through his characters at communism and religion over and over again. Yes, we get it. You're an angry libertarian atheist. Odd that you would build an after-life into your world, but we'll just chalk that up to a conceit of the genre.

All of that blather leads me up to the series I wanted to talk about in the first place. Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

This series is the definition of what I would call dense. There are a ton of important characters crossing paths constantly. We're constantly jumping from one group to another in a way that keeps the pace up. Sticking around long enough to advance that portion of the plot, but always moving on at just the right moment to leave you itching to get back. It's dark and gruesome when it's appropriate, but it doesn't lingers in a way that makes you wonder what's wrong with the author. Now, much of this "dense" perception may have a lot to do with the fact that I haven't had much chance to re-read any of the novels. It also doesn't help that there have been great lengths of time between when I read each new novel. Even with all that potential for confusion, it's clear that a great deal of thought has gone into the underlying cultures, systems, and history of these novels. (Erikson is an anthropologist, which helps)

There's an interesting mix of names used. Common foot soldiers in the Malazan army operate almost exclusively on given nicknames like Sorry, Fiddler, Smiles, Whiskeyjack, and Bottle. It's very different and makes it easy to keep track of the 50 or so of them I've run across at this point. Some of the other races allow Erikson to experiment with names like Anomander Rake, Mappo, Scabandari, Trull, and Icarium.

Deities can have a couple different names depending on who's talking: Fener, Boar of Summer, Shadowthrone, Ammanas. The magic system and the Pantheon are deeply intertwined because magic is drawn from holds/warrens, which are both a realm, and an elemental power. Each warren my have anywhere from 1 to a dozen deities running things. The Pantheon is constantly churning with gods killing one another off, mortals ascending to god-hood, and existing gods fading from memory. There are at least two tiers of gods, Elder and modern.

I've never felt like I was being preached at through the text*. You get the usual "war sucks" theme from the ground level, but you also get a god's-eye view on occasion that lets you realize that the fight really does mean something in the grand scheme.

There isn't a whole lot of black and white "the last battle is coming" prophetic nonsense going on. You can tell you're looking into a snapshot of an ongoing battle that may or may not come to an end some day. Nobody's even trying to guess how it will all end.

*Some of the content in the most recent paperback release compels me to amend this statement slightly. There's been quite a lot of railing against recent Christianity-like strawmen Erikson has built up. There's also been significantly more "War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" in this volume than the previous ones. Rather stupid considering how important the fight is he's been building up.

1
Wait, there are fantasy novels more dense than the Wheel of Time series?I plowed through the first ten and gave up when I realized that I would have forgotten all the important details by the time book eleven came out. The molasses pace of the plot may have also played a role. They had their moments, though.

Seconded on Tom Bombadil. You'd think from all the people who protested his absence in the films that his character was integral to the story, but in actuality he shows up for a chapter or two near the beginning and is all but forgotten afterwards. Maybe I'll make a Demotivator on the subject. "TOM BOMBADIL: He's actually kind of lame."

Posted by: Andrew F. at August 15, 2008 09:04 PM (EP84l)

2
Definitely more dense, but in a good way. Erikson's material has much more going on (or at least feels like it), and he does it at a pace that doesn't dawdle on details like the exact cut of dress every single character is wearing, or a full accounting of ingredients in every meal.

3
Couldn't agree more, I remember reading the WoT series way back when and thinking it was the apex of fantasy writing. But then I read first Glen Cooks Black Company and the Stephen Erikson's Malazan books. After reading those two series I couldn't even reread Jordan's books, which I tried to do when I heard heard he had died.

As to what was said in the italicized writing; i found that it was only certain characters that are doing the complaining are all older and have more of a right to be tired. I think its less of a theme in those books than it is a personal belief held by certain characters.

Posted by: Joshua at March 11, 2009 01:22 PM (0Yr25)

4
I know I'll be at least obligation-buying Memory of Light this fall (assuming Harriet and the ghost writer hit their target date). It's been a while, but I'll probably just hit a wiki or two rather than re-read everything for a refersher.

I'm just about to finish my second re-read of The Bonehunters, then I can start into Reaper's Gale (for the first time).